Age of Sigmar Learning League: Wood Elves vs. Stormcast Eternals

We’re back with another Age of Sigmar battle report: Wood Elves vs. Stromcast Eternals! Check the Tactics Corner for more great battle reports.

Hey everyone, the battles rage on! Reecius’ Wood Elves take to the field against Pablo’s Stormcast Eternals, 25 wounds a piece. I changed my list up a bit this go around, I wanted to try the Waywatchers instead of Glade Guard and WOW, what a difference. Read on to see why!

Note: We’ve been using initiative as it is written in the book for most of the games (we’ve played about 7 games now in the league), rolling for it every turn but in this game Pablo and I totally forgot to do it and had a fixed initiative.

Wood Elves:

Wayfinder Lord

11 Waywatchers

1 Warhawk Rider

5 Wardancers

Stormcast Eternals:

Knight-Venator

5 Judicators: Bows, Shockbolt Bow x 1

5 Judicators: Crossbows, Thunderbolt Crossbow x 1

Yikes, Pablo went full force shooting, which in AoS is very powerful. This would be a tough game as he generally out-ranged me, meaning I’d have a tough time getting into position to actually fight. Objectives would be a big part of determining who won this game.

Mission:

ITC Scenario 3: Kill Points with Maelstrom and Slay the Warlord, King of the Hill and First Strike as bonus points.

Turn 1:

I won the roll to go first, and took it. Pablo deployed his Knight-Venator out of range (who by the way, WOW, 12″ move and 30″ range, hitting on 2’s?! haha, holy crap). I moved forward and managed to kill 2 of the Bowmen on the first turn with Hail of Doom Arrow and the handful of Waywatchers that could get into range. Their Precision Shots special rule is amazing, and really helped me out this game. My Warhawk fly over to grab a maelstrom point, once again proving how awesome it is to have both mobility and objectives in the game to make it fun.

In retaliation, Pablo’s Venator and Bowmen dropped a few of my Waywatchers who passed Battle Shock thanks to my Lord’s Bravery buffing aura. He also managed to pick up 2 Maelstrom points, bringing him to an early lead!

Score:

Maelstrom: WE: 1, SE: 2

Kill Points: WE: 0, SE: 0

Bonus Points: We: 0, SE: 0

Turn 2:

Turn 2 I moved the Wardancers forward hoping to make an 8″ charge into one of the units of Judicators. The Waywatchers unleashed into the Crowssbowmen as they were the bigger threat to me with the multitude of shots and dropped 3 of them with some lucky Precision Shots…wow! My Wardancers unfortunately, failed their charge, leaving them in the open. Had they made it, that probably would have sealed the win for me. My Warhawk Rider picked up another Maelstrom Point, nice!

Waywatchers strike!

Pablo’s forces fell back, and unleashed another volley into me, dropping all but 1 Wardancer and some more of the Waywatchers…ouch! The Stormcast Eternals got no Maelstrom points this turn, tying us up there.

Score:

Maelstrom: WE: 2, SE: 2

Kill Points: WE: 0, SE: 0

Bonus Points: We: 0, SE: 0

Turn 3:

I advanced up the field and between my Lord, the Waywatchers and the lone Wardancer (who barely passed Battle Shock again, thanks to my Lords Bravery aura) managed to take out the last 2 Crossbow armed Judicators giving me a Kill Point and taking Pablo off of his objective. For the third turn in a row, my Warhawk Rider picked up a Maelstrom point, too!

The Stormcast Eternals then counter attacked, throwing everything they had into the Waywatchers whose deadly arrows were dropping Stormcast Eternals left and right. They took a beating but 3 were left standing and passed their Battle Shock. The Stormcasts again, failed to grab any Maelstrom points as they had to keep falling back away from my warriors apart from the Venator who came forward that turn to deny me from taking another point on his objective 3.

Score:

Maelstrom: WE: 3, SE: 2

Kill Points: WE: 1, SE: 0

Bonus Points: We: 0, SE: 0

Turn 4:

I moved up to take Obective 1 for a Maelstrom point and for King of Hill which would be coming up at end game! I had also taken the chance to pour everything I had into the Venator who with his crazy range and speed would be pretty much impossible to kill for me unless I could lure him close. I came oh so close to killing him, but he survived with 1 wound left, gah! He then fell back into the corner of the board and he and the remaining Judicators fired into the Waywatchers but in cover, they were pretty tough to hit and hurt due to their special bonuses, and they weathered the storm.

The Stormcast Eternals also managed to finish off the last Wardancer, giving them a Kill Point.

Both of us picked up a single Maelstrom point this turn, keeping the Wood Elves slightly in the lead.

Score:

Maelstrom: WE: 4, SE: 3

Kill Points: WE: 1, SE: 1

Bonus Points: We: 0, SE: 0

Turn 5:

I decided that with my dwindling resources, I had to go for broke this turn! My Warhawk Rider was the only thing that had any chance against the Venator as he was the only unit that could reach him, so he flew right at the annoying angel wannabe! My Lord decided it was time to play smart and ran backwards towards an objective and out of LoS to avoid giving up a KP and Warlord. My Waywatchers similarly hid behind a small building but in range to get King of the Hill.

The Warhawk Rider went in hot and between his shooting and two rounds of combat, managed to take the last wound off of the Venator, giving me a KP and Warlord, huzzah! At this point we called it as Pablo had no viable targets in LoS and couldn’t get enough Maelstrom points to get back in the game. He was able to take out the Warhawk Rider, but it didn’t tip the scales.

Ka-kaw!

Wood Elf Victory!

Final Score:

Maelstrom: WE: 4, SE: 3

Kill Points: WE: 2, SE: 2

Bonus Points: We: 2, SE: 0

Total Score: WE: 6, SE: 0

Fun game, again! That Knight-Venator is crazy good, wow! If it weren’t for the inclusion of Objectives, I never would have been able to even shoot him as he could just fall back and pepper me with shots. Objectives made the game a game, and so much more fun. The Waywatchers are incredibly good, much better than the Glade Guard. That is one of the funny things about AoS, some units that have the same number of wounds are simply not equal. They’re not usually as far separated in power as the internet makes it sound like (Glade Guard in a big unit for example, can be very powerful) but their is a discrepancy. Points would go a long way to providing balance, or something like points. Now I know the game wasn’t meant to be balanced with wounds, but in general it is a decent way to do so as far as we can tell at this stage. I can say though, that for me it will be all Waywatchers, all day going forward. They’re excellent!

Everyone in the studio is very much enjoying the game. It’s fast, fairly straightforward but with some depth in combos, movement and order of operations. We’re all very excited to add our next 25 points as the first round of games is nearly finished.

Another great report! You’re absolutely right about the deficit that arises out of using wounds to balance AoS. Theoretically, this balancing method should favour ‘elite’ factions like Stormcast Eternals or Slaves to Darkness, especially given the added durability of a 4+ save. For that reason, I’m very happy that the Wood Elves won!
Any chance of getting a breakdown of how the other games have been going?

We are unaware of SCGT format. We know them, but have not read the format, yet. We figured it would be easier to start out using basically the rules of the game in order to make it easier for folks reading these to wrap their heads around it. Plus, we thought it would be good to try the game itself before applying many modifications to understand the foundation.

Lots of combos! That is where the game’s depth and tactics come out. So long as you use objectives to avoid boring mass melees in the middle of the table, and start finding those combos, the game becomes pretty deep, actually.

We decided not to use AoS terrain rules in the first round of games as many of the group have never played AoS or in Mariana’s case, never played a miniatures game! We wanted to keep it simple to start and will add more rules as we go.

The modularity of the rules is definitely an interesting design choice, and one that I am writing an article on. The very base set of rules is simple, but is the core of the rest of the game to build off of. You and your opponent, or tournaments, can then pick out what rules to add for whatever depth you want. Include missions? What about terrain? Special rules on which realm or landmass you’re fighting on? What about points/wounds/model count (in the upcoming general’s handbook)? Battalions: yay or nay? Time of War special rules? Mix and match any of these rules until you reach the desired complexity, along with prioritizing which are more fun to play with.

Yeah, wounds are certainly not the best way to balance the game but we needed somewhere to begin.

And Raw Dogger will be posting a weekly update on the overall standings. So far, Death is obliterating everyone but Mariana’s army, picked based on the cuteness of the models, lol, is also just viciously running over folks.

Ugh, those waywatchers are amazing. I had a great time having a good old fashioned shoot out with Reece, however he just brought the heavier firepower. One thing I would like to note about Age of Sigmar that I really like is the shooting ranges. 30′ is the farthest I have seen a model shoot, and it isn’t very common. It makes the game much more fast-paced and balanced un like 40k where 36 inch ranges are the norm and combat is basically identical.

It’s been said that wounds is a tough metric to use for force selection, but would you say that 25 wounds is an okay point at which to dip one’s toes? We’re following along with these and are curious for something dead easy to throw down for an afternoon. Using characters from Silver Tower is a really cool aspect too for those of us who haven’t played much WHFB.